Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mr. Sellin.

Welcome to this fourth lesson on Martin Luther and the European Reformation.

And we're going to answer our big inquiry question today with some extended writing.

In order to do that, you need a pen, you need something to write on.

You don't need a mobile phone.

Martin Luther didn't have one and you don't need one either, but you do need to make sure you've got the title correctly and it's Luther and Lutheranism.

And you might need to skip back to the start of the video just to make sure you've got the spelling correct.

And once you've got all these things ready, let's go.

And today's lesson begins with Albert.

I mean, what a hat, we can't deny, it's the first thing we're all thinking, isn't it? It's absolutely enormous.

I love the fact that this badge is so small compared to the entire, you could land a helicopter on that thing.

Anyway, Albert was not just a connoisseur of excellent hats.

He was also Duke of Prussia.

Prussia was a state within Poland, and it was a very powerful state.

Although it had had a few problems, Lutheranism, that's Luther's ideas, had spread in the first half of the 1520's into Prussia, and there were certain powerful groups within Prussia who were becoming Lutherans.

This meant that they were not obeying the Catholic church.

This meant that they were starting to challenge the authority of the leaders, and Albert, he was quite concerned.

He actually was in communication with Luther, and Luther suggested something quite radical.

Why don't you become a Lutheran? Why don't you change the way that your entire region is set up and run? Why don't you ask the King of Poland, Sigismund, to give you a special grant, become the Duke of Prussia, the first Duke of Prussia, and you can be a Lutheran? And he did.

And the Polish king agreed to it.

Albert, Duke of Prussia, was the first Lutheran ruler.

And this meant that the official church in Prussia was Lutheran.

Now you can see here, this is Sigismund, and he's giving the grant.

You can tell it's an important occasion because of the flags and the amounts of gold.

He's giving him his Ducal grant, which means he's now the Duke of Prussia.

Like I say, first Lutheran ruler.

And this is important.

Before we go any further in this lesson though, we do need to sort out what we mean by Lutheranism.

And I'd like you to copy this definition down.

Lutheranism is a form of Christianity that follows the teachings of Martin Luther.

So pause the video and do that now, please.

Lutheranism is an example of Protestantism.

This is where things get a bit tricky.

Protestantism is the name that we give to those versions of Christianity that broke away from the Catholic Church in protest.

Protest, Protestantism, is a good way of remembering it.

There were Protestants before Martin Luther, but they were killed off pretty quickly because they didn't have the printing press to spread the message as well as Luther did.

But Lutheranism is not the only type of Protestantism in the European Reformation.

There was also Zwinglianism, following the teachings of Zwingli.

There was Calvinism, following the teachings of John Calvin.

There was Anglicanism, which is the version that they had in England.

There's lots of different versions.

Lutheranism was an important one.

Some might say it's even the most important, but it is just one version of Protestantism.

Okay, so pause the video, take down that def.

Always the wrong way.

That definition of Protestantism as well.

And remember, you might want to draw a little arrow or something to show you that Lutheranism is an example of Protestantism.

And I'll go away and be quiet now.

Okay, what was Luther trying to achieve? That's our big inquiry question.

That's what we're going to write an extended answer to by the end of this lesson.

And after 1525, where we left the story last lesson with the Peasants' War, after 1525, Luther had a bit of a calmer life in a way.

He didn't appear in front of the Emperor or the Pope.

He didn't have a diet that he had to go and present himself to.

Instead he wrote a huge amount.

A lot of what Luther did was through written communication.

And we've seen a few of those examples already.

We've seen Luther's Bible, which was being translated from the original languages into German so that the ordinary German folk could understand it.

He also wrote catechisms, which were printed cheaply so that Germans could understand simple messages about Luther's beliefs, that they could repeat them, that they could practise them, that they could be confident with the new religion.

But he also did some other things.

He wrote a huge number of letters.

We've already talked about how he talked with Albert, Duke of Prussia to encourage him to become a Lutheran.

This here is a collection of all his writings in one book.

It's a huge amount of stuff that he wrote over his life.

He also wrote hymns.

He was a musical man as well, and this is an example of a hymn book that he wrote.

He also found time in all of this to get married.

This is Katharina Von Bora, who became Catherine Luther.

And he had a good relationship with her.

Occasionally they would argue, occasionally she would get fed up that he was getting too angry with other people, but on the whole, he absolutely loved her.

And she loved him.

Now, remember, this is unusual for a priest like Luther to be married.

He would not have been allowed that in the Catholic Church, but in the Lutheran Church, this was okay.

It's very important to have a working knowledge of the difference between Catholics and Protestants.

Remember, Protestant, Lutheran, technically different.

In this case they're very similar though.

Therefore, I'd like to draw this table in a moment and then sort these eight facts into either Protestant beliefs and practises or Catholic beliefs and practises.

This is based on what you've learned so far in this video, but also over the last three lessons.

So it's a bit of a test of what you remember, and it's good to establish this moving forwards.

So pause the video now, draw the table and do your best to sort them.

Once you think you've got the answers, unpause the video again.

Great.

The answers are here.

Protestant beliefs: Salvation is achieved by faith in God.

That means there's nothing that the church can do for you.

It's about you and God.

Having a relationship with God, having trust in God, only that gets you into heaven.

God's word is in the Bible alone.

No priest, no Pope can say that they speak for God.

The Bible, so the scripture, is the only place you can find God's word.

Priests are allowed to get married as Martin Luther did.

And also church decoration must be kept simple.

If you have too much gold, if you have too many paintings, if you have too much incense, it will distract people from God.

Churches should be simple.

On the other hand, here are the four Catholic beliefs.

Firstly, salvation is achieved by good works.

Catholics said it's not enough just to think that you're getting into heaven, or to pray to God and have faith in God.

You have to demonstrate that you are a good Christian.

You have to go through these good works, giving money to the poor, helping rebuild church buildings, for example.

Making sure that you go on pilgrimage to Holy sites.

You have to live as a good Christian.

Also, the Pope is able to express God's word.

He is God's representative.

He comes from a line of Popes that goes all the way back to the first Pope, Saint Peter, who in the Bible was given this power by Jesus himself.

"Thou art, Peter, and upon this rock, "I will build my church." It's from the Bible itself.

The Catholics said that the Pope had this power.

Priests cannot marry.

They're married to God.

They're married to the job.

They should not marry and they should not have families and children.

And lastly, churches are decorated with expensive goods.

This is to reflect the glory of God, to demonstrate that this is a special place and the most precious of places.

Good.

Having sorted the Protestant and the Catholic beliefs, it's now time to look at the next part of the story of the Reformation, which is where we start to leave Luther behind.

And that's not to say that Luther's not important in this part, but there are far more people who join in with this whole story.

And I'm also not going to tell you the full story of the Reformation.

Our inquiry is about Luther.

This is a massive topic.

We could spend 25, 30, 180 lessons on this, but we don't have time.

We've got four.

So I've decided to focus on Luther, and this is where I'm going to be ending the story, or at least bringing it to a close.

Anyway, the Diet of Augsburg, this was a meeting of German princes, like the Diet of Worms that we saw in 1521.

The Emperor Charles V, a Catholic ruler was concerned at Lutheranism spreading amongst his princes because he realised that these German princes that were declaring themselves as Lutherans, weren't just religiously motivated, but politically motivated as well.

What I mean by this is that they were becoming Lutherans because it gave them more power over the Emperor.

Not just over the Pope, but over the Emperor as well, and this was a concern.

And so he calls together all the German rulers and he decides to have a meeting in which they'll work out what they're going to do about this new religion, and how they're all going to move forward.

Martin Luther did not go to this diet.

It was too dangerous.

Remember, he'd been made an outlaw.

It was illegal for him to even attend this, so he didn't go.

He was worried for his life.

Instead, he was instrumental in writing something called the Augsburg Confession.

Now, the Augsburg Confession was a list of beliefs, a series of statements.

And it was written by Luther and a few other key Protestants.

And it was presented to the Emperor by some of the German princes.

The German princess who agreed with it, and they said, we're standing up to you Emperor.

We are declaring that we are Lutherans.

What are you going to do about it? Now, this was, again, a big deal.

This is an official declaration that the empire was starting to break up, and Charles was really concerned.

You can imagine what happened after 1530.

There was horrendous warfare.

There was decades, if not centuries-long conflict between Catholics and Protestants.

It ended up with hundreds of thousands of deaths.

It was absolutely horrific.

But let's not think too much about that because that's, again, part of the longer story.

What we do need to think about is Luther's intention.

By the 1530s, Luther is one part of a bigger machine and his intention was to allow other people to continue Lutheranism.

He knew he was mortal.

He was going to die one day.

He knew he couldn't do it all by himself.

It was out of his hands now, but he encouraged people like Albert, Duke of Prussia the first Lutheran ruler.

And he encouraged people in the Augsburg Confession to stand up and declare that they were Lutherans and they weren't afraid of the Emperor.

And it worked.

Lutheranism and Protestant as a whole fueled the Reformation.

The Catholic church lost power, and it had a lasting change in Europe.

The divide, you can see here in Western Europe.

The blue countries are majority Catholic countries, and the purple countries up here on majority Protestant.

That doesn't mean that everyone in France is a Catholic and everyone in Norway is a Protestant, but that there's just more Catholics than Protestants.

In fact, there's Catholics and Protestants throughout all of Western Europe, and it's just those colours are a useful divide.

This is a map from 1950, about 70 years ago.

This is not a map from 500 years ago.

For hundreds of years, there has been a divide in Western Europe's religion between Protestant Christianity and Catholic Christianity.

It has led to violent warfare.

It has led to disruption, but not all the time.

There was about a hundred, 150 years of horrendous warfare after Martin Luther.

And then it did calm down.

And there've been a few pockets of violence ever sense, but on the whole things have calmed down and both sides have accepted that the other exists and that they ultimately worship the same God.

I hope that you will be able to study the Reformation in greater detail at another point with another history teacher.

I think it's an absolutely fascinating part of European history, but for now we do need to return to our inquiry question.

What was Luther trying to achieve? Now, this is a funny question really, because it's so obvious by now that there's not a simple answer.

Luther didn't have one plan, one idea, one aim.

His aims constantly changed because he changed.

His story changed, Europe changed.

He can't be expected to have one aim throughout the entire thing.

So what are we going to do? Well, we're going to do our normal thing where I will send you away in a moment, and you're going to read some comprehension slides, answer some questions, and then you're going to come back.

But that's not the key thing.

It's a simple matching exercise.

I'm not going to get you writing for this part at the moment.

What I am going to get you to do once you come back is then write a few detailed paragraphs which answer this question in a brilliant way.

Because it will be brilliant because you have covered so much information on Luther and the European Reformation.

So what you need to do is pause the video.

You need to read the slides on the next page, which covers pretty much an overview of what we've been doing over the last four lessons, and answer the comprehension questions.

And then really importantly, come back ready to write.

Do that now.

Welcome back.

You will have found that you had to match the event, just these four events to Luther's underlying aim during that event.

So number one for the 95 Theses you should have got B.

During the 95 Theses, Luther wanted to have a local debate with other educated men.

If you didn't get that right, write it down in your book now.

Number two, the Diet of Worms. You should have got A.

During the Diet of Worms, Luther wanted to publicly state that he believed what he wrote and was not afraid to disagree with the Pope or the Emperor.

During the Peasants' War, number three, you should have got D.

During the Peasants' War, Luther wanted to prevent violent revolutions by those who should be following their rulers.

And number four, the Lutheran writings that sort of ever since 1522 onwards, Luther wanted to outline what a Protestant religion might look like and encourage others, specifically rulers, to adopt it.

Great, with that in mind, that's a simple overview of the narrative that we've looked at over the last four lessons.

We need to now do some extended writing.

This is going to be done in four sections.

I don't want to say paragraphs because people worry about how long's a paragraph? It's sections.

I've split it up into the first section, which covers Luther and the 95 Theses.

The second section, which is the debate that Leipzig and his excommunication in 1520.

The third section, which is the Diet of Worms. And then the fourth section, I've kind of given this idea of Lutheranism, and I've included in that quite a few things.

The Lutheran Bible, you might include the Peasants' War, the Augsburg Confession.

This will look like quite a lot of stuff, and you will need to look back at your work from previous lessons to make sure it's absolutely top notch.

In each section, you're going to need a few sentences explaining what was happening, and a few sentences explaining what Luther was trying to achieve.

Now, you're actually only going to do three sections at least, because I'm going to go through my first section, which I've done as an example.

And you can either write your own version of it, or you can copy it word for word, and I'll explain why in a moment I don't mind that.

Okay, so this first section.

The 95 Theses.

By 1517, Martin Luther had become very concerned that the church was not following God's commands in the Bible.

For example, he was very angry that indulgences were being sold by some priests as a quick shortcut into heaven.

Therefore he wrote down 95 of his criticisms and published them in Wittenberg, probably placing them on the door of the cathedral.

He did this because he wanted to start a debate.

Luther was a university professor, as well as a monk, and it was normal for men like him to debate their views and criticisms of the church.

However, his debate grew to something much larger.

Now, I think this is quite straightforward, this piece of writing.

You'll notice that this first bit here is the narrative.

That's what happened.

I'm saying Martin Luther wrote the 95 Theses and potentially put them on the door.

The second part is just a few sentences explaining why he did that.

And you'll remember that that's the structure I'd like you to use.

What happened? What was Luther trying to achieve? But there are a few parts where I've been quite careful with my language.

For example, I've used the phrase for example.

So I've given a specific detail.

I've spoken about the priests who were selling indulgences.

Remember Johann Tetzel? I could have been more precise and included his name.

Maybe you will do the same in yours.

I've written, for example, some priests.

I've been sure that it wasn't every priest, but it was a local problem with Tetzel.

I've used the word, probably placing them on the door to reflect the fact that we don't know for sure.

what we've got here is a few sentences of narrative and a few sentences of intention.

And that is what I want you to do.

Now, you can either copy this word for word as your first paragraph, or write your own version.

You could edit it slightly.

You might want to copy half of it and then add in your own bits that are more detailed than mine.

That's absolutely fine.

The reason I'm happy for you to copy it word for word is I'd rather you get started on the page.

So if you really feel that you can't do it yourself, copy down mine, and then at least you'll get a sense of how long it should look when you do the next ones.

Pause the video now and do that.

Great.

If you hit this point to the video, you should have got the first section done.

You now need to do the second, third, and fourth section.

Spend your time planning what you're going to write.

Make sure you've got the different events in your head clear before you start writing.

You'll need to look back at previous lessons and make sure that you are precise with your details.

Now, don't worry if it doesn't look exactly the way that I'm going to show you that mine has turned out.

It's not about getting exactly the right answers.

It's about telling the story and it's about answering the question of intention.

So give it a go.

Use it as an opportunity to show off how wonderful your historical learning has been over the last few lessons and have fun with it.

It's your opportunity to do your best.

Pause the video now and get writing and I'll see you after you're done.

You haven't paused yet.

Pause now, go and get writing.

Go on, go on.

Well, you should have done the writing by now.

If you haven't, pause, go back, do the writing.

Great.

I'm going to show you my example now.

My answer to this question.

And it follows a similar style to the first paragraph that we looked at, and might look similar to yours.

It might look different to yours.

It's not about working out if it's right or wrong, it's just about comparing.

So let's go through that now.

Debate at Leipzig and Excommunication.

Luther's thesis proved controversial, and after a few years he was called to a public debate with another professor called Johann Eck.

In these debates, Eck was able to force Luther to admit to heretical views, mainly that the Pope did not have any special powers, and that the Bible was the only true source of God's word.

In response, Luther was threatened by the Pope, and when he did not back down, he was excommunicated in 1520.

Luther's aim was to demonstrate that he was not going to change his mind.

He'd become absolutely certain that he was following God's teachings correctly.

At Leipzig, and by burning a people bull, he went further than he had previously gone by agreeing to heretical views.

Now, I've used some technical language like papal bull, excommunicated.

You may have added some more.

You may have done a slightly different arrangement.

You may have added in a bit more details.

If you did, fantastic.

Diet of Worms. After excommunication, Luther was looking more dangerous due to his heretical beliefs, and the supporters he was gathering.

The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, wanted to challenge Luther and try to calm the situation down.

Luther was called to a Diet, a meeting of the German princes in Worms. Where he once again declared his heretical views.

He managed to escape thanks to Frederick the Wise.

Luther's aim was to make it very clear that he was willing to disobey his emperor, if it meant obeying God.

Despite the dangerous nature of his admission, Luther was not worried because he believed that his salvation was guaranteed.

He wanted to encourage others, particularly German princes, to adopt his new form of Christianity.

Lutheranism.

Initially hidden away in Wartburg Castle, and always an outlaw, Luther continued to write.

He translated the Bible into German, he wrote catechisms to help teach his message, and he wrote strongly worded attacks on the peasants who attempted to revolt.

Slowly but surely, various German princess began to see the appeal of Luther's beliefs because they had been worried that the Pope and Emperor were both too powerful, and the new religion gave them more authority.

Luther wanted to make sure his ideas continued after his death.

He was helped by the printing press, and by the increasing numbers of supporters.

Other versions of Protestantism began to spread too, and Protestantism is the second largest branch of Christianity today.

Well done.

That's all from me.

We've learned about Luther, the 95 Theses, and an entire story that goes over decades, and has implications that lasted centuries.

I really do hope that you'll learn more about the Reformation in the future.

I hope that you'll learn more and think back to these lessons when you looked at Luther and what he was trying to achieve, and hope that you remember that no one's as simple as just having one intention in life.

We're complex people.

Luther was a complex man, and the world is a complex place.

And on that philosophical note, I'll end there, I've been Mr. Sellin you've been learning about Luther, farewell.